What can an ash cloud teach us about cloud computing?
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Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Archives
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April 27, 2010 12:00 PM
Early this week, I saw a note from Christian Verstraete (CTO for HP's Manufacturing and Distributions Industries Worldwide) where he mentioned cloud and the impact of the ash cloud on travel last week:
"Last week, there was only one discussion in EMEA, it was all about volcanoes and ashes. And I can tell you, it became quite heated at multiple moments. This really got me thinking about elasticity. You know, in the cloud space we often speak about elasticity, about the possibility to ramp up capacity quickly. Well, when I ended up spending hours on the phone waiting for the travel desk to address my issue, I can tell you, I would have appreciated some extra elasticity. Indeed, with cloud we now provide elasticity from an IT infrastructure perspective, but elasticity is not part of the design of any other system in the enterprise. Travel operators do not suddenly appear out of the blue to take the extra phone calls that are being made. So, my question is really, aren't we overdoing it on the elasticity front. Indeed, what are the business problems that can be addressed by just throwing some extra IT capacity at them? Well, I came up with a couple, film rendering in the media business, reservoir simulation in Oil & Gas, finite element calculation in discrete manufacturing, genome sequencing in pharmaceuticals. Actually, most of those have been addressed for a while with high performance computing. Now, there are a couple others, like increasing the web site experience even with large amounts of users. But most of our processes require the interaction of IT with other systems (human or machines) which are not infinitely scalable, and for which extra capacity cannot be turned on quickly. So, yes, elasticity is a feature of cloud, it has its space in the portfolio of cloud features, but it is not the panacea that will resolve all problems. In the current hype that is somehow sometimes overlooked."
His entry made me reflect back on a cloud myth post I made a while back.
Many IT organizations view of cloud is from a very limited infrastructure only perspective. That's good, but as Christian points out there are many more levels of flexibility required to actual delivery business value within the business in a flexible fashion. We can't lose sight of why we need the flexibility in our systems and processes and what make cause us to invoke a rapid response. It is the business that needs the flexibility at the end of the day, the systems are just there to support it.
Originally posted on The Next Big Thing blog
| Blogger Profile: Charlie Bess | |
| Charles Bess has worked in the Information Technology industry for about 30 years supporting a variety of large organizations and industries. Charlie has performed a variety of formal and technical leadership roles throughout EDS and now HP. He is a licensed professional engineer and in 2002, a senior member of IEEE and was recognized as a Fellow within HP for his focus on value delivery and innovation. Currently he is focused on the Chief Technologist functional relationship between HP and its largest clients. In addition to these activities, Charlie has also worked as a public speaker, advisor to SMUs MBA program and supported engineering and computer science activities at Purdue University and University of North Texas. He’s been blogging on technology and business value related topics since early 2003. |  |
